Abby in Wonderland
by JMK758
Summary: The lightning storm was only supposed to set records in the DC area. To Abby Sciuto it did far worse. AU.
1. Storm of the Millennium

The usual legal Disclaimers apply here. Bellisarius Productions owns the fictional NCIS and all things related thereto. I make no money on this, darn it. Only Original Characters such as Dr. Samantha Sky are mine.  
This story takes place outside of my ongoing series of mysteries. Actually, it's outside of a great deal, so pull up a chair as we join

Abby in Wonderland  
By JMK758  
Chapter One  
Storm of the Millennium

The lightning storm that assaults Washington and turns the midnight sky into a day and night strobe is the worst - or best - that Abby has seen in years. Cloud to ground bolts stab the night in a billion volt spectacle as great as the torrential rain.

Dubbed by the NWS 'the Storm of the Millennium' it unleashes, in near and distant blasts, fingers of power that slam the city. Abby and her roommate Sammy Sky stare at the devastating display and Abby feels it's as erotic as it is devastating. The thunder is a thrilling, continuous series of deafening blasts, some of which shake the building with their power. Their ears barely have time to recover from one explosion before being assaulted again, and those bolts that crash behind the third floor apartment brighten the sky and street to nearly daytime intensity, while the nearly blinding flashes before them precede by instants blasts that seem to batter their bodies even through the closed windows.

One could easily fancy that Thor and his fellow storm gods of a hundred religions have declared war upon humanity.

x

"Oh my GOD!" Sammy Sky, bent beside her at the window, exclaims. Abby knows she loves thunderstorms, the more violent and spectacular the better, so as she clutches her white nightgown at her chest Abby's not sure if it's an illusion of shielding or semi-orgasmic delight? Her voice rises nearly three octaves as a bolt crashes down six blocks away and thunder shakes the building. "That was _INCREDIBLE_!"

The petite blonde normally speaks the language of emphatics and this time the excitement is justified.

"We think it's the sunspot activity making things so intense," Abby declares, linking herself with a city full of impressed meteorologists.

"OH _GOD_!" Sammy screams, barely heard over the explosion of a blast that touches ground half a block away. This close, the lightning cracks like a whip snap independent of the thunder, startling in its intensity and volume. Each snap makes the women jump in their skins.

Sammy presses to the glass, trying to see more and better. Torrents of rain make it hard to see beyond three blocks, but nothing can mask those fingers of power.

"Aren't you glad to be up here?" The phenomenally mirthful ME trainee had wanted to go to a Club. Fortunately, she'd watched ZNN.

"You _kidding_?" Less than half a mile away a thick bolt splits to stab two spots in the beleaguered city and the simultaneous explosion rattles what had, until now, seemed secure panes of glass. "We'd be _fried _out there!"

x

Normally Abby would consider such a declaration to be hyperbole but today she considers her friend to be trying out some rarely attempted understatement. As she watches another half-dozen jagged spears stab various parts of DC - far and uncomfortably near - she considers the potential damage of this storm.

Sunspot activity indeed. Gamma and other radiations pelt the Van Allen belt each second of every eon, but tonight they must be pounding it with a cosmic sledge hammer. She wonders if an aurora is visible above the clouds that cover the city in a thick blanket.

She's turned her computer off and unplugged everything; no possible surge protector could deal with amperages of this magnitude, but tomorrow she expects to hear lengthy stories of-

A blinding flash and deafening *SHZRACK-BOOM* drive her back from the window, Sammy's shriek lost in the masonry-obliterating blast.

"FRACK!" Sammy yells, probably because she too is half-deafened, "that was right across the fracking street!"

"Sammy..."

"Come _look_! It turned that tree into _toothpicks_!"

Abby returns to her place. Toothpicks is an exaggeration but the tree is definitely stunned and missing quite a few pieces. Looking through the fire escape she sees one branch, as thick as her waist, lying on the sidewalk. Only the torrential rain eases concern about fire from the smoking limb.

Leaning on the windowsill, Abby reconsiders this front-row seat for the FX show of the millennium. "I really think that's enough for now."

Sammy turns up to her. "You _kidding_? When'll we _ever_-?" SHRA–BOOOOOOMMMMM!

Abby, blind and deaf, has a second's sense of flying backward.


	2. Delerium

Chapter Two  
Delirium

Heavy pounding on the wooden door to her right drags Abby from black oblivion into her too bright living room. She can barely focus upon anything other than the gradual awareness that she's flat on her back. It too gradually dawns upon her that she's laying on a too thin carpet, the sun is up, it hurts like heck to move and the increasingly loud pounding on the door has got to stop.

"Sammy?" she calls. She couldn't be on the floor in daytime - Sammy would never - unless she's–!

Gone.

She forces herself to sit up far enough to get her elbows behind her so she can look around the room. She's alone. Where's Sammy? She's gone? _Gone_? Then who's pounding on the door?

What happened? It's morning. Did Sammy try to revive her and then run for help?

The pounding comes hard enough to shake the door's hinges. Did she lock herself out? She can't imagine who's pounding on the wood hard enough to rattle it in its frame.

"Who is it?" she calls, rolling over. It doesn't help; now the front of her body is abused by the hard floor.

"Tim! _Open this door_! NOW!"

Her heart leaps into her throat. There's only one reason 'Mild McGee' would beat on her door like this. 'Someone's dead! _Sammy_? Did Sammy get hurt, stagger out into the storm - or did she go for help and–?'

x

Abby shoves herself off the floor, her body shaking; and only has a moment, while fighting for balance against her body's preference to rejoin the floor, to wonder 'I thought this carpet was softer,' when McGee hits the door again - hard. It shakes in the frame and she staggers to the door, unable to think.

But then she realizes something that completely escaped her addled mind; McGee didn't sound distressed, he sounds mad.

But the pounding's shattering her thoughts, leaving them broken debris on the jagged, dark plain of her mind, and try as she does she can't pick them up again.

It takes a moment for her fingers to work the deadbolt properly - that must have been some jolt but 'Where's Sammy? And why would she leave me on the floor _unless_...?'

She manages to get the lock off, turn the knob and McGee bustles past her close enough to nearly knock her down. All she glimpses is a flash of white shirt as he passes.

x

"Leave your phone off the hook, _Sciuto_?" he demands briskly and turns on her. "We've been calling you for _two hours_."

Clutching the open door, feeling so shaken by the devastating bolt of lightning - how long ago? - that she can barely stand up, she finally manages to take him in.

"McGee? What're you _wearing_?"

The black trousers and white half-sleeve shirt start out okay but his gold NCIS shield is pinned over the left breast pocket of what's obviously his tailored uniform shirt. On his left half-sleeve, near his shoulder, is an American flag while on his right is the shield/eagle NCIS sigil, the eagle's brown wings extended to cover the Navy sigil. Below each of these, above the short cuffs, are gold on black Sergeant - PO1? - chevrons. 'T McGee' is incised into a rectangular golden plate that gleams above his right breast pocket.

"My _uniform_," he declares, monumentally aggravated. "What are _you _wearing?"

She glances down at the black silk pajamas that cover her from open neck to bare feet and that catches the sunlight in shifting gleams as she pushes herself from the door and closes it. "My pajamas... I think."

She can't remember them, but what else can they be but clothes she can't even remember getting into? She was wearing a white nightgown, her funeral shroud she wears to sleep in her coffin when she's alone, wasn't she?

Was she?

What's happened? What's happened to her memory?

'Amnesia? Can lightning give amnesia?' She can't remember her pajamas. She can't remember Tim in a- "But what are–?"

"Well, get _out _of them and get to work." He turns from her, anger and disgust in every nuance. "For God's sake, Ga–" He halts, looking down at her coffee table. "What the HELL is _this_?"

x

She stares with equal outrage at the trio of empty bottles that litter the low table, the glass quarts overturned in every direction. Unlike her, McGee has no trouble finding words to go with the sight.

"Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, Kentucky Bour–" he snatches the last up, whirls on her, shaking the bottle violently. "_This _is your idea of 'clean and sober'?"

"McGee, I nev–" Leaning back against the door, she struggles to find words to counter the senseless. She can't remember the pajamas, the uniform, certainly can't remember the _bottles_.

"Jesus CHRIST, Gail! Five _months _into a six month Probation and you fall off the wagon so hard it's a wonder you didn't bloody your face!"

"But I - they're not–!"

He flings the bottle onto the white couch - white? - and his hands chop the air to silence her. "_No_! I'm done. I've had it. _Look _at you; you can't even stand up straight."

"I–"

"Enough! You don't show up for Roll Call, you don't answer your phone, I come here and what, were you passed out on the floor?" He slices the question away. "Look, I don't even want to _talk_ to you anymore." His arm stabs the air toward her bedroom like a javelin. "Get in there and get _dressed_."

Shaking, so stunned she can't think, knowing how her trembling must look but that's not true, she pushes off the door, walks past the furious man on trembling legs through the left corner door and down the hall, follows his stabbing finger into–

x

She's through the door and her heart flips over, takes her lungs and sternum with it. She can barely breathe as madness threatens–

Her coffin, a luxury, full feature antique complete with twin silver candle stands at head and foot, lit only when she's not alone, has been replaced by a queen-size bed under a red comforter. The night tables on either side contain clock radio, _pink_ shaded lamp and an assortment of feminine paraphernalia.

'What the hell? I wouldn't be caught dead with this stuff."

Closets, a mahogany dresser with brass handles, a mirrored bureau and other things, none of which is a proper somber black, have replaced her furnishings and all are illuminated by the sunlight that streams through pink pastel drapes.

Abby refuses to say aloud 'this isn't my room' for fear that if a disembodied voice answers 'yes, it is' she'll run screaming from the apartment - even past the astonishingly irate Tim McGee.

She stares at the room, walks from one insane artifact to another, barely able to stay upright on trembling legs. Going to her closet - at least that's where it belongs though it's brown instead of black - she opens it with shaking hand.

"Oh, my God... this can't be happening..."

x

The bar is filled with dresses and blouses and skirts; pink, red, green, yellow, blue... and on the door beside her hang from a hook four sets of _uniforms _similar to McGee's.

Up front, the first set of black pants hang straight within a crisp white half-sleeve shirt already made up for wearing. An NCIS badge – she doesn't _use _a badge! – is pinned opposite a gold name plate 'A Sciuto', while on the sleeves the flag and sigil are repeated above two gold chevrons. "PO2 to his 1?" she wonders, half annoyed by the inequity. 'I've been with NCIS a lot lon–'

She slices the thought, unable to endure the insanity of it.

The pressed white shirt already has a black clip-on tie with brass NCIS clip attached. There's a Sig Sauer in a belt-attach holster hanging beside the uniform. She hasn't worn a weapon in all those years she'd been about to claim and doesn't want it now. But then again, if Tim McGee's gone berserk, maybe she should have it.

x

'This is a dream. It _has_ to be a dream. I was shocked by the storm. Well, if it's a dream,' she feels the white shirt, the gold badge, 'it's a heck of a good one. But dreams can't hurt me, so while it lasts I wonder where it goes.'

It's not the first time she's been self-aware in and about a dream, so that doesn't bother her as much as Tim's aggressive attitude. This isn't the Timmy she knows.

She steps to the full length mirror that also doesn't belong here, half wondering why her hair is loose rather than in last night's pig tails like she'd put it. She opens her black pajama top and lets it fall behind her.

'What the _hey_!'

The pink demi-bra is one thing, the cups almost exposing her areolas – _pink_, double _ugh_ – but above the waist she's had, for years, eleven of her sixteen tattoos. 'So where _are _they?' Her skin is as virginal as... well, as when she _was _a virgin.

She half turns, searches back over her shoulder, but the two Saint stick emblems and the masterpiece Cross are gone from her bare back.

Pushing her black silk pajama pants from her hips so they form a black puddle about her feet doesn't reveal any traveling artwork, just a pair of matching pink bikini panties. 'Come _on_, that's going too far! If I have to have this dream, black or a decent red, _please_.'

x

The door behind her opens. "You ready yet?"

She whirls with a gasp, nearly trips over the black pajama pants pooled about her bare feet as her hands fly to her chest and pubes. "_McGEE_!"

He searches her from bare feet to face and down again as she tries to cover more of herself than possible, cringing before him as if that could help hide more.

"So you've got tits and a pussy, so do three billion other women. Now _get them into your uniform._ Let's get _going_!"

"McGee–" He cannot - Tim McGee can _not_ have broken in on her. 'Tits and pussy?' McGee does not talk like that - any more than he'd stand here ogling her - "Get _Out_!"

He crosses his arms across his own chest, but unlike her he's hiding nothing, particularly not anger. "You've already proven you can't be trusted without supervision, _Corporal_. How much did you guzzle down last night, or have you been working them for days?"

"I didn't drink _anything_!"

He stalks up to her. That he'd walk in on her while she's nearly naked is unthinkable; that Tim McGee would use such words as 'tits' and 'pussy' to her is insane.

But she never, ever imagined he'd _hit _her!

x

The backhand slap to her right cheek stuns her, knocks her against the mirror and, incredulous even more than hurt, she makes the mistake of looking at him. The open-hand slap to her left cheek is even harder.

She trips in her black silk pants puddle about her feet as the slap knocks her toward the bed. She bounces off the foot of the mattress to the floor, too shocked and scared even to scream.

He grabs her by her forearms and she's prevented from fighting back by her hands covering her only half covered breasts. The demi-bra makes her breasts seem half on display. She knows she should hit back but her mind, overwhelmed by so many shocks, won't let her move.

When did her modesty overwhelm her instinct to survive?

He yanks her upright to her bare feet, spins her around him and backs her fast across the room until she slams against the wall next to the dresser so hard the barrier shakes.

x

Anyone else on the planet she'd fight, but Tim McGee would never, _ever_ raise a hand to her! Insane as this is, it has to be a dream, she can't fight him and tries to cover her breasts with her hands.

"You stupid _bitch_," he grates through gritted teeth, his face inches from hers. "I don't know what's wrong with you that you'll throw away your future but I've _had_ it with you. The only reason I don't break one of those bottles and carve 'clean' and 'sober' into these udders is that I just dry cleaned this uniform. But you get me and you get me _good_: you fall off again and I'll save you the trouble of a Departmental Hearing. Understand?"

Heart slamming so hard she can barely hear him, she can't even think of the weapon hanging on her closet door beside her. This isn't happening. Tim McGee can_not_–

He pulls her and rams her against the wall so hard her head bounces off it. "_Understand_?"

She's stunned, fighting unconsciousness, shaking so violently, gasping so brokenly she can barely whisper "Y - yes."

This CAN'T be happening, and as a dream it _sucks,_ but it hurts too much to be a hinky dream.

He releases her just as violently. "Get dressed. We're leaving in three minutes no matter _what_ you're wearing."

He turns, stalks out and she's shaking so hard she can barely breathe. She only knows that she absolutely believes his deadline.

x

She tears the uniform off the door and yanks it on with trembling hands, utterly relieved to find black socks tucked into leather shoes beside the bed. 'First thing that makes sense.'

Feeling so strange in these clothes - she couldn't be paid to wear this quasi-military outfit - she barely gets the last shoelace tied when he walks in, catching her seated on the edge of the bed.

"Done. Good."

x

She leaps up, hands raised defensively, not sure if he's going to hit her again. "Tim please - wait - listen. I know this is going to sound crazy but I don't know what's happening here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean this isn't me. Whatever's happening I don't know - I don't understand this. I don't belong in this uniform."

"You're damned right you don't, Corporal. _Move it_!"


	3. Brane Theory

Chapter Three  
Brane Theory

Abby's heart pounds so hard she's light headed and sick. She had to clutch the banister going down the two flights from her apartment to the street, not sure if Tim McGee, following a step behind her, wasn't going to shove her off the steps. Getting into the (not his) car was hard for her shaking and buckling herself in was just as bad. She doesn't want to be trapped by the wide bands; she wants to run screaming from the car and to hide somewhere until the world comes back.

She feels the planet has reversed its rotation, tilted and is trying to throw her off, and fight as she does she can't slow her heart which thumps so hard she can almost watch it against her white blouse. The loud thumping in her ears almost drowns out the motor and she's hyperventilating. If she doesn't get it under control she knows she'll faint or vomit, possibly both.

She tries to get that under control since, if she either gets sick or faints, she doesn't know what McGee will do.

Then again, she might wake up from this nightmare, but she has absolutely no confidence in this.

She tries to clutch her heart through her shirt but her hands shake so violently she wants to sit on them to hide her fear.

x

She feels completely alien in this black and white uniform and tries to grab enough seconds for _something_ to make sense.

She's wearing a freaping _Uniform_ for God's sake; gold NCIS badge pinned above her left breast, 'A. Sciuto' gold name badge before her right, NCIS Eagle and Navy sigil on her right half-sleeve, familiar (thank God) flag on her left blowing 'backward' and two gold Corporal chevrons below each.

She rides the familiar route to the Navy Yard but though it looks the same as usual nothing is normal. She glances at the man driving the car, a friend she doesn't know anymore. This _has_ to be a sustained nightmare and desperately tries to wake up.

She's sitting beside a similarly uniformed Tim McGee, except he's a Sergeant - he'd called her 'Corporal'. She'd obeyed his orders to dress, came to the street and got into this black car–

But for the first time since meeting him, she's deathly afraid of Tim McGee.

x

He pushed into her apartment - where did _Sammy_ go? - and started out verbally abusive but quickly escalated that to physical. Finding three bottles of _booze_ on her coffee table, he'd walked in on her when she was nearly _naked, _just bra and panties and she doesn't _own_ pink underwear, though Sammy does - but _where's Sammy_? - slapped her - twice, and slammed her into a wall - twice!

There was murderous fury in McGee, rage that terrified her. When she'd unknowingly ruined a $2,000 jacket he'd had for two days, he'd contained himself admirably. She'd learned from Tony the extent of what she'd done and, thankfully, she'd been able to replace it and all had been forgiven. Now he's slapped her - twice, slammed her into a wall - _twice_ - and threatened to break one of those booze bottles and to carve 'clean' and 'sober' into her _udders_?

x

She should be applying her mind to finding out what happened. She's NCIS' Forensic _Scientist_, for God's sake, but the scene of the crime is her apartment and she's leaving that further away by the second.

"Tim?" He doesn't answer. He hasn't looked at her since they got into this unfamiliar and too CIAish car. "_Sergeant _McGee?"

"What?" The word comes from ten miles away.

"Would you please stop?"

"Stop what?"

How much exasperation can a human voice carry, and how does he do it with her? The gentle McGee she knows...

"The car. Could you ... _please _... stop the car?"

x

For a time it seems he's going to ignore her, but eventually they reach a break in the line of parked vehicles beside them and he pulls in, turns off the engine and doesn't glance at her. "_What_?"

"Why are you doing this?"

Of the myriad things she wants to know, his treatment of her is the most painful. He'd burst in on her, accused her of terrible things - things that may be justified since they'd both discovered three overturned liquor bottles on her coffee table except she doesn't drink, not like that! But then he was abusive to her - verbally at first, thank God - but that was just a preliminary set of shocks. He'd walked in on her when she was practically _naked,_ just in her underwear, like she didn't have the slightest right to personal privacy - and then he'd _slapped _her!

Twice.

_Hard_!

He'd slammed her into a wall, twice, all the while accusing her of being a drunken sot, no less, who'd thrown her life away.

She can't stop coming back to that madness. In the face of all that's happened, she keeps coming back to that.

The universe may have gone mad but the change in Tim McGee is far beyond madness. The sting in her cheeks may have faded, but she'll suffer the pain of those smacks until she's a hundred.

"Tim, you've got to believe me. Someth–"

"_Why_?"

She hadn't expected him to cut her off, especially not with such scalding venom. "Why what?"

"Why should I believe you when you're the worst _liar_ I've ever met?"

x

"Tim ... I wouldn't lie to you. I-" She's astonished - and _afraid _- when he releases the wheel and clenches his left fist so tightly his arm trembles. But seconds later he covers it with his right hand, actually forces it down to his lap. He doesn't release the trembling pressure, nor ease it from his voice.

"'I don't drink, Tim'," he intones angrily, staring straight ahead. "'I don't have a problem, Tim. I can control it, Tim. It's just social drinking, Tim, unwinding with our friends. I'm not a drunk, Tim. I'm not an alcoholic, Tim. I wasn't drunk when Drake got away, Tim. It wasn't my fault; I just snuck a few drinks on that Stakeout, Tim. It wasn't my fault - they have no right to suspend me, Tim. I was under the legal limit, Tim. Help me, Tim. I promise, Tim - no more booze. Help me. Please, Tim. I swear to God I'll change - don't leave me alone. I can do it if you help.'" He twists to her so sharply she cringes into the door, appalled by the litany and not sure what he'll do.

"Well, I _helped_. I went to the Lieutenant, to the _General_, about Drake. I even gave you extra chances! I gave you mints when you came in reeking of booze. Who was it that shoved coffee into you in the locker room so you'd at least _seem _sober by the time the Lieutenant saw you? I believed you were serious, that this time you wanted to fight it.

"And then you go AWOL and I find you - oh, and I had to beg the Lieutenant to let me be the one to check on you because I was afraid of what I'd find - and I find you with three empty bottles of booze. You probably passed out on the floor before you could hide them - and you were so slammed you couldn't even walk!"

x

"Tim," she ventures carefully, hands raised defensively - she's never had to defend herself against Tim McGee - "I'm going to tell you the absolute, God-as-my-witness truth."

He turns forward again. "That'll be a hell of a change," he tells the windshield

"I don't know if I deserve that, because I don't know any of this. I'm not... I'm not the Abby Sciuto you know."

He finally looks at her without outrage and it's not an improvement. "Then who _are _you, the 'clean and sober' Gail Sciuto? Because I thought I was getting to know her these past five months but I realize now you've been _faking_ it and I haven't seen herin over two years."

"Gail?" The name tag says 'A' for Abby, _no_, it's for Abigail. She raises her hands. "Never mind, not important. The truth - the absolute God-honest Truth... is that I'm not the person you know. I'm someone else – literally someone _else_."

x

He turns only his head and there's absolutely no expression on his face. It's chilling but she presses forward.

"I'm not 'Gail Sciuto', I'm _Abby_ Sciuto, Forensic Scientist for NCIS. I'm not a Corporal - you're not a Sergeant by the way, we don't use military ranks _or _uniforms - and I'm not addicted to anything - well, except to 'Caf-Pow!' but there's no alcohol in it and it helps me think - I have too much respect for my brain cells." He hasn't brought on any expression. "Tim?"

"Go on," he says, his voice as empty as his expression. But at least he's not slapping her or lashing out in outrage.

"Last night, in that humongous, ginormous storm, maybe even extra leakage of cosmic rays through the Belt from the sunspots, I think I got hit by lightning and woke up here."

"There was no storm last night."

x

For the first time she takes real note of her surroundings as they travel south. It doesn't look like it's rained here in days, certainly not last night's deluge.

"Darn it, Sammy and I were watching it for an-"

"Sammy?"

Frack. "Sammy Sky. She and I have roomed together since-"

"You're trying to say you and Samantha Sky have been living together?" He looks disgusted. Tim's the one who can always be trusted to be on her side but "Your lies are usually pathetic, but this one is downright stupid."

"I'm telling you the _truth."_

"You're as much a liar as you ever were."

"No! I swear I'm not lying." He still stares and she can't take it anymore. _"Well?"_

"Then this is your best post-binge hallucination yet, though you usually don't remember them when you sober up." She sighs heavily, utterly exasperated. Can't he get it? "I probably hit you too hard - or not hard _enough_."

He turns forward and reaches for the key.

x

"WAIT!"

He stops, but she can see in his new expression that it's not to listen to any more delirium. "You're dreaming now that you're a Forensic Scientist," he sounds completely disgusted. "Gail, for God's sake, you're not any _kind _of a Scientist! You're an Investigator - and at one time you were a good one. Today I don't think James would let you into his lab. He'd be afraid you'd blow it up."

"Wha– _James_?" Horror reaches a crescendo as she realizes what he must be saying. It can't be, but as she stares into Tim's so familiar eyes of a stranger she knows the Devil has to be laughing hysterically at her from his fiery throne. "Jimmy Palmer? _He's _your Forensic Scientist?"

"_Yes_, James Palmer, he's our Forensic Scientist," he tells her, his tone heavy. "For the past ten years."

"Then who's Duc– never mind, not important. I have a theory. I think!" He looks disgusted. Again. "I do. It's possible something in 'Brane Theory' can account for this."

x

He scrutinizes her and she's sure she doesn't like what he's probably thinking. "Brain theory?"

"Short for membrane, a physics theory being applied by some Cosmologists as an alternative to explain some things that cropped up in the Big Bang theory. I've always considered this one a bit hinky but maybe they're onto something, especially when extra intense cosmic rays from sunspots get involved.

"Now I haven't kept track of things happening on the sun lately, but a few weeks ago there were massive bursts of gamma radiation bombarding the Earth from solar flares. We had those bursts yesterday, NASA says they were extra intense and might set a few records. These sunspots can last for hours or months, so there's an excellent chance they're the culprit."

He doesn't interrupt so she presses forward. Maybe she's starting to make progress.

"This, if I'm right, is a one-in-a-trillion-year event in any one universe, or should I say universes, but what if it's not? What if it happens more often?" He doesn't say anything. "Brane Theory conjectures that we exist not in a universe but in a _multi_verse pressed together like pages in a book," she raises her hands close to illustrate, "separated by variations in quantum reality no more than a difference in vibratory rate common throughout our own universe but not common to adjacent universes."

She doesn't care for the look in his eyes, but at least he's not interrupting. Actually, he looks disgusted and that's not an improvement.

x

"But there's gravitational attraction between the universes, probably through something in quantum physics called gravitons. Eventually the membranes _touch_," doing so, she slowly moves her hands apart, "causing a Singularity that releases massive amounts of energy that pushes the universes apart with a flood of 'strange energy' that pushes them apart again and keeps them separated until it cools and/or dissipates."

He just stares.

"Some Scientists postulate that's where new matter comes from in an ongoing cycle of creation. But what if it happens on a small scale too? This is quantum physics we're talking about, the science of the ultra, ultra _ultra _small and maybe it happens more frequently, not with universes over trillions of years but in my living room last night."

"Your living room last night."

She feels like she's coming into the home stretch. "What if a billion volt lightning bolt - normally they're about 10,000 volts per cubic centimeter or 25,000 per square inch but maybe this was humongously higher - together with the extra intense cosmic rays - hitting my fire escape blew me into some hinky alternate universe? And the resulting creation of strange matter pushed the two universes apart and will keep them apart until it cools and dissipates.

_ "Wait!" _It's she who interrupts herself. "Why didn't it blow my tats?"

"Your tats."

"My tats. Why wouldn't-?"

He puts his hand up to stop her. "You know, Gail, you're right. _This _time I believe you."

"You do?" She doesn't know if she should be staggered or ecstatic.

"Yes." He turns forward in his seat, turns the key and revs the car. "I think your brain and your body have been separated from each other by the booze."

x

"Tim..."

He pulls back into traffic. "Look, Gail, do yourself a favor and don't tell anyone about this _theory _of yours. I'll tell the Lieutenant you stayed up late going over the Delmar case and slept through your alarm. I'll cover for you just like in the old days." He can only spare her glances but they're hard ones - diamond hard.

"But tonight you check yourself into Rehab or I'll cuff you, shackle you, gag you and carry you there. I meant it before, Gail; I've _had _it with you. I'm _done_. This is the _last _time I'm ever going to protect you, and I don't _ever _want to hear another one of your hallucinations again, you got me?"

"But this isn't a–"

He slams his fist onto the wheel. "_**SHUT UP**_!" he screams and has to fight the car back under control.

x

Abby sits stiffly, too scared to move even after the car steadies forward. Tim McGee has never screamed at her - any more than he's ever hit her.

This universe is insane and she's trapped in it, lost and probably stranded.

But frightened as she is by this bizarro world, her terror is focused on the furious man eighteen inches from her.


	4. Bizzaro World

Chapter Four  
Bizzaro World

The Navy Yard and the NCIS headquarters building are unchanged from 'yesterday', but the people within the imposing brown structure on Secard Street are exactly who they should be yet vastly distorted. As she enters the building and by-passes the Security Checkpoint, the faces, the bodies, are correct but Abby has never seen this many white and black uniforms anywhere.

And it isn't like she could imagine these are Navy uniforms. Despite the maritime connection, these uniforms are distinctly NCIS uniforms but for an NCIS that can't possibly exist - and within which she's trapped.

The majority of uniforms have only the ubiquitous flag and 4 color sigil on left and right arms, the sigil the flag shield under the brown winged eagle, but most uniforms are without rank chevrons or other emblems. Gold shields gleam on the left sides of shirts over closed pockets instead of being kept discreetly pocketed in cases and - unnecessary for she recognizes everyone - gold name plates gleam over right pockets.

The majority of the gold chevrons she sees on sleeves as she follows McGee from the main entrance to the elevator are single ones, quite a few less are the two such as she wears and a lesser number still are sets of triples such as adorn McGee's half-sleeves.

When they get on the elevator she tries to stay as far from him as the small space allows.

He hasn't said a word to her since that explosive command in the car and she keeps her own silence as he leads her off the elevator into a crowded Operations Division and toward the very familiar bullpen.

She can't wait to see Gibbs. _He'll _help her.

Still, it's hard for her to endure this madness. This is not NCIS. The McGee who escorts her is not the considerate gentleman who first attracted her attention - and her love - so many years ago. She can't imagine falling in love with this man, and he fits in so well to the atmosphere she breathes in the familiar Operations division.

When they enter the bullpen everything - and everyone - are where they belong; Ziva to her left, Tony right, McGee's desk beyond and another vacant desk beyond that - hers? She doesn't care about any of this - Tony's a Sergeant and Ziva's a Corporal - because at Gibbs' desk is

_Lieutenant _Jennifer Shepherd, gold bars gleaming on each lapel.

x

"Lieutenant," Tim steps before her desk, salutes her. Abby breaks her distress - where's _Gibbs_? - barely in time to attempt a salute.

Shepherd doesn't look up from the paper in her hand. "Finally decided to grace us with your presence, Corporal? Just in time for lunch."

"I'm sorry, dir - ma'am - Lieutenant."

"She'd been working last night on the Del–"

She looks up and it was better when she'd been reading. "I don't want to hear it from you, Sergeant."

"Yes, ma'am."

Shepherd turns her aim to Abby. "Well, Sciuto, you've been dealing with the Delmar case for -" her eyes flicker to the wall clock "26 and a half hours. What've you got?"

'A headache the size of Australia and the screaming heebie-jeebies.' "No, er, significant advances since my last report, ma'am." She prays 'Gail Sciuto' _gave_ her boss some kind of report.

"I see." In her hard stare Abby can read the demanding question: Did you work last night or go home and open a bottle? "Well, I trust you'll have something more comprehensive to report in an hour."

"Yes, ma'am," they say in chorus.

"Dismissed," she has to say only once.

x

Abby and Tim return to their desks, Tim to his usual one and Abby to the one she's used to Michelle Palmer occupying. She's not that interested in Michelle's fate as she is, when she looks to the woman in the desk across the bullpen, with the white hot question 'Where's Gibbs?'

She tugs the leather holster off her uniform belt, pulls out the top right drawer of her desk and deposits the weapon there as she's seen agents do uncounted numbers of times. She hopes she can leave the detestable thing there.

A bigger question slams her harder than one of McGee's slaps: 'Where am _I _and how do I get _out _of here?'

x

But she does have a very good resource for answering these questions. Though she's been assigned to deal with some 'Delmar' case, she doesn't care about that. 'Let the other Abby - or 'Gail' - deal with that. Who the hell is she anyway, and why is everybody mad at her?'

x

Deciding that's her best starting point, she accesses NCIS' Personnel Files. Twenty seconds later her face - and not her face - stares out at her. Normally, from the front, her spider web tattoo on the left side of her neck is visible and she can't get used to not seeing it. The face, the long flowing hair that could make whips rather than pig tails and the white uniform shirt mean nothing to her, the text on the left side of the screen does.

'Abigail Sciuto, rank: Corporal, birth date: right, address: right, marital status: sing – _DIVORCED_?'

This is enough to rock her back in her seat, but she recovers quickly enough that no one notices. 'Divorced?' She sits forward. 'Divorced from _who_?'

She clicks on the word, it opens a supplemental file and Abby feelsher heart almost stop.

A fist clenches that organ in a painful grip, and when it lets go her heart races to make up for lost beats plus a thousand more.

x

It takes another moment, but her racing heart blasts such a rush of adrenaline through her arteries that she feels her metabolism kicked to warp nine. It hits her brain with such a rush she feels she's gulped a gallon of 'Caf-Pow!'. The room shakes and she feels sick, dizzy and–

'No _wonder _he just walked in on me when I was nearly naked! I don't have a thing he hasn't seen – _fondled_–' She turns to Tim at the next desk, wondering when the horrors are going to end. 'Oh - My - GOD!'

x

It finally makes sense - at least this much does. Very few things are capable of sparking such anger, such frustration, such deep, raw intensity of emotion as love; or in this case love gone wrong. There's a fine line between love and hate, and he's probably crossed back and forth over it many times.

'How long ago? _Eleven months_? And they work side-by-side? No _wonder _the wounds are still raw. What's with this NCIS? Who keeps a divorced couple working six feet from each other?'

The only place to find answers, for the moment, is inside these files.

x

'This Abby - I mean 'Gail' - started out like a house on fire. Been here seven year- _she was a Sergeant_? What the frack happened?

'She married McGee five years ago? Wow, wish I'd seen that! Oh oh. Three years ago she started getting in trouble. Verbal warnings. Written warnings? A suspension? Two suspensions? All for _drinking_?' She glances at Tim, tries to imagine those days.

She can't.

She can only continue reading this outrageous record. 'Social drinking became party drinking became secret drinking became... showing up for work UI - to drinking _on _the job?'

x

Appalled, Abby's not sure she wants to read more, but the horrible fascination… she can't stop.

'Two years ago they split up. Tim filed for divorce. God, this can't be happening - have happened. It did happen. Last year she let a suspect slip by her on a late night Stakeout. A Departmental Hearing found her guilty of being drunk on duty. Peter Drake slipped through her fingers. NCIS tracked him down, he took a hostage, killed him before being killed in a shootout...

'Gail Sciuto was _fired_?

'On appeal she got her job back - Tim said he went to bat for her - but she came back a Corporal with a 6 month Probation - five months ago.'

x

Abby can stand it no longer. She's cold and the room is spinning in an adrenaline-flooded miasma. This is shock setting in. If she doesn't stop it'll overwhelm her but she can't stop. Not now.

This can't be real - and yet it's on all the screens she's cross-referenced, black pixels on white plasma.

But horrific as this is - _how _could _this _Abby Sciuto throw away her _life_? - it doesn't help with the real issue:

'How the _Hell _do I get out of here?'

x

'My lab. If the answers can be found anywhere, it's there.' Getting up, she turns right and heads for the rear stairwell, hoping her departure is rapid and unexpected enough that no one can–

"Where are you going, Corporal?" Shepherd asks before she can reach the door.

Halting so sharply she hurts herself, she turns, crosses her fingers, toes and almost does so with her eyes. "I have to check on some forensic data in my - that is, in the lab."

"Are you finished with that report?"

'Why _now _do you have to be so Gibbs?' "Um, almost. I'll be right back."

She hopes Shepherd hasn't Gibbs' talent for reading lies, for she never wants to set foot in this bizzaro room again.

Taking lack of refusal for permission, a modified application of her best friend's Rule 18, she hurries out the door before another hundred things can go wrong.

xx

As she exits the staircase on the main floor rear she sees, crossing the corridor intersection far before her, a familiar petite figure, a flash of long - long? - pale blonde hair above deep blue scrubs. 'Thank God,' she thinks, realizing that if Jimmy Palmer is the Forensic Scientist in this Bizzaro-NCIS, Ducky has to have an Assistant, and whatever the cosmic coincidences that stretch credulity beyond the breaking point, he can't ask for a better choice. '_She'll _be on my side!'

"Hey, Sammy!"

The young woman turns and sees her, but there's no welcoming grin. She turns about, walks away quickly, turns right and disappears beyond the intersection. Abby, at this point beyond surprise with this bizzaro universe, hurries after her, unable to imagine why her new best friend would snub her. They've been sharing her apartment for weeks, frustrating every pool on how long two hyper-elated people can live under one roof without mutually self-combusting.

Abby rounds the corner and the petite young woman is forty feet away. "Sammy!" As she hurries, the blue clad woman slows, reluctance to do so evident in every cell in her body, and as Abby reaches her she turns around.

Sammy looks so different and it's not just the mid-back-long pale blonde hair framing the utterly familiar face rather than the above the shoulder locks she'd had last night. Her eyes, her normally jubilant face, her posture all scream detestation spiced with hatred.

x

"What is it, Corporal?" The question is delivered in that careful, ultra formal tone every Serviceman learns within a week of being in uniform, but there's no friendliness in the pale blue eyes.

"Oh, Sammy, not you too." She'd so hoped her best friend would be–

"My name is Samantha," she says between clenched teeth.

"Not since you were fourteen. Oh, Sammy, what's gone wrong? Don't you … I can't … I hoped…."

Samantha Sky - the Samantha Sky she knows - had been Ducky's temporary Assistant during the three weeks while Jimmy and Michelle Palmer were on Honeymoon in Hawaii, but obviously….

"What do you want, Corporal? I'm _busy_."

The tone, the words, stab her heart. "Sammy, we – I need someone sane to talk to. We're _friends_." She hadn't realized until now how badly she needs a friend.

"_Were_ friends. I still don't want to have anything to do with you. _Ever_!"

"But _why_?" She tries to keep the desperation from screaming in her voice. She needs her joyous, impish friend but that woman isn't in the person standing before her.

Samantha's look screams 'you know why' better than words ever could.

"Please, whatever happened I swear I don't know. Something's happened, I need help figuring it out and everywhere I go I run into people who hate me - even you - and I have no idea _why_."

"You don't know _why_?"

Where is the mirthful friend she knew last night? Where, in this hard and angry young woman, is the bubbly sprite she loves?

"I swear as God is my witness I don't. Last night everything was fine between us, now-"

"Last _night_? I haven't had to see your face in a week and I'm sorry I am now." Abby has never known these pale blue eyes to be glacial, but now a glacier would be warm. "You get hit in the head or something? You don't remember two months ago?"

Her face, her tone, turn hard as steel. "Well, it'll be my pleasure to _remind_ you."

x

Abby's afraid to hear this. Where's the joyous imp who was so excited over the lightning? Where's her friend?

"I made the mistake of thinking you were my friend. I offered to help you."

"Help me how?"

"With the _drinking_, of course! I got help when I needed it so I offered to help _you _control it but you were in denial and I kept _trying_. I thought I could get through to you."

"Sammy, I swear to God that was not _me!"_

"Not you? Liar! When you came to Autopsy and I tried to help, you snatched a scalpel off the tray, swung at me and did _this_!" She yanks up the front of her scrubs, pulls the left cup of her bra down.

"Oh holy–!" Abby gasps. The white line isn't fully healed, the marks above and below it show the insertions and exits of stitches only recently removed. The six inch long horizontal scar runs well above her nipple but across Sammy's breast–

And she's to be the one who inflicted it.

x

Sammy replaces the cup, pulls down the blue top. "I jumped back in time, you only got an inch deep but you came that close to severing my breast! You _did_ sever several milk ducts but Doctor Mallard saved me. He was stitching me up before the ambulance even got there but I'll have this scar forever! Since then I've had nothing to do with you. I've learned my lesson and I want you to stay the fuck _away _from me!"

Abby feels sick. This world is tilting her off. Nothing here makes sense and this is the worst. How could she do that to her best friend? That horrible scar–

"Sammy, I'm sorry! I swear on a stack of Bibles I'm sorry but it wasn't me. I mean it may seem like it's me but it's not. I'm not the–"

"_Fuck off_!" Samantha turns on her heel, walks rapidly down the corridor and out of her life.

xx

Abby clamps her hands over her mouth to trap the sob. It's too much. She's scared, devastated, trapped; her 'husband' hurt her; her best friend hates her and she's trapped in a nightmare from which there's no waking up.

x

Devastated, she turns back, retraces her steps to the closed rear door of her - of _Palmer's _- lab, but she stops in the corridor, unsure how much more she can take. She can barely hold back tears, must stand in the hallway until she can compose herself. If she must confront Forensic Scientist Palmer in _her_ lab and beg for his help, she can't go in sobbing like a baby. She must go in as the Forensic Scientist of NCIS even if the world is insane.

She doesn't know how long she fights, only that it's not long enough. She makes that final turn and approaches her lab's rear door. She opens the door and has to hold herself up by her grip on the doorknob.

Something's finally as it's meant to be.

She tries to get control of her trembling legs as a tsunami of relief drenches her. Everything is exactly where it belongs - Major Mass Spec, Captain Centrifuge, General Gas Chromatascope, Jimmy Palmer in his white lab coat–

'Okay, not everything.'

x

The tall, thin man turns from the Infrared Spectroscope, a clipboard cradled in his left arm, either because he heard her or sensed her. With Jimmy she's never entirely sure, especially after he married a Witch - or did he? But at least when he looks at her there's more affection than aggravation in his eyes. That's an especially good thing because she has the feeling she's about to piss him off too. "Jimmy?"

"Gail?" His eyes x-ray her soul. He adjusts his round framed glasses and x-rays her again. "What's wrong? You seem tense."

Her laugh is half-hysterical. "You'll never know the half of it."

x

She steps into the lab, tries to get over his being in this room and she feeling like a visitor. _She's _supposed to be wearing that white coat - well, not _that _white coat; it has 'J. Palmer NCIS' stitched over the pocket and it would never close over her chest, but one like it. "You won't believe the hinky day I've had."

He frowns, his face doing a wonderful imitation of a puppy that's heard a strange new sound. "Hinky?"

"Not you too!"

"I'm sorry," he says, clearly having no idea what he's apologizing for.

He sets the clipboard on top of the FITR Spectroscopy Machine and she almost snaps at him not to put it on her equipment but bites the words back in time.

"Let's start over," he suggests. "Hi, Gail, what can I do for you?"

'You can get back down to Autopsy and let me work in peace.' She bites this back too, the growing series of unspoken words giving her a stomach ache. "I _really _need your help."

He's a good MD - where he belongs - in her world - but if he's NCIS' Scientist then maybe together they can...

"Sure. You know you only ever have to ask. What's up?"

x

'Thank God.' "I need to pick your brains. You know I'm not the Scientist," her stomach is getting fuller and queasier, "but I need your Science knowledge on - on a case. Yes, that's it, a case."

"Which one?"

"Drake. I - er - mean Delmar."

"I thought you solved that."

"No, I mean yes, I mean - oh never mind! Look, I've got - an electrical matter - a theory I have to test, maybe even an experiment."

"Electrical?" he asks, his eyes lighting with that boyish enthusiasm she knows so well. "An _electrical _experiment?"

"_Yes_." She's so relieved she thinks she could fall to the floor in a faint. "High voltage. Super high voltage."

If anything, his interest couples with delight and anticipation. "Super high? How high?"

"BEV."

"_Billions _of Electron Volts?" His grin is so wide she thinks she's given him a lifetime of Christmases in one minute.

She bites her cheek, apprehensive. Things can't suddenly be going her way. "Can you do it?" She searches the lab but finds nothing that could. His equipment is her equipment. Or is it? "Can you get up to the BEV level?"

He grins and heads for the rear lab. "Come see."

x

Not sure if he's got Frankenstein's monster lashed to a slab, Abby follows him into 'her' office and through to the smaller lab beyond, finding not all that much out of place - except for her pictures and her personal stuff. But a well appointed lab is a well appointed lab and from what she can see he's got a lot of good stuff.

She passes him to enter the inner room. Behind her the glass door between office and inner lab slides shut and Jimmy locks it. She turns back at the sound but the look he gives her is one of intense anticipation.

In this room there's little that's different from yesterday; a large central table, a multitude of machines of various design - but absolutely nothing capable of generating the HV power she needs if her theory is to be properly explored and tested.

Forensics goes black.

x

She's blind and unprepared to feel his hands on her shoulders. She cries out as she's spun around but her protest is smothered by his lips.

His arms hold her tightly pressed to him, but then his hands start groping her, one to cup her ass, pressing her groin against his while his other arm holds her securely against him, mashing her breasts into his chest. She can't see anything; blackness presses her eyes like his hands press her body. His face is right before her eyes in the passionate kiss and she can't see him.

She's bent backward, pressed back over the table and when her feet leave the floor she recovers enough to struggle. But she can't even break from his lips, let alone escape his questing hands.

She can barely manage muffled '_mmmmpphh_'s, but when he gets her over the table onto on her back, astonishment surrenders to full blown panic.

In the pitch blackness, his mouth clamped to hers muffles her scream. He yanks the left side of her shirt up out of her pants. His hand comes up under her shirt.

Gagged by his mouth, muffled by his tongue, she's blind and can barely hear her own screams.


	5. Shocks

Chapter Five  
Shocks

As Jimmy's hand clenches her breast Abby's panic leaps from 'fight or flight' to 'kill or be killed'! She turns her head sharply and the sudden move breaks the kiss. As Palmer's head drops past from his force, she turns and bites his neck as hard as she can. He screams, pushes up off her and she punches blindly, feels impacts to his head.

She shoves him away, uses the table edge to support herself, raises her legs, gets her feet between their bodies and kicks wildly, not caring where she hits.

She gets in three good kicks before she can't connect any more.

Bolting from the table the instant her feet hit the floor, she runs for the familiar switch by the locked door and floods the room with light.

Jimmy's on the floor and he rolls over, turns to her, adjusts his glasses, shields his eyes from the glare and demands "What the _hell _did you do that for?"

Fury turns to shock. "What did I–? You were _raping_ me!"

"Of _course _I was raping you! You said 'hard, fast and extra rough'! What'd you bite and kick me for?"

x

This Bizzaro world has driven her too far. She's shaking so hard she can barely stand, her heart slams about in her chest, she heaves great gulps of air and she's sure she's going to be sick. "WHEN did I ASK you to _RAPE _me?"

"You GAVE me all the signals!" he exclaims furiously, holding his wounded neck. She hopes she took a piece out. "Electric! You _told _me how much force you wanted - mega voltage - _billions _of volts! I wasn't really in the mood for rough today, I wanted us to take our time but I gave you exactly what you wanted and then you _bit_ and _kicked_ me!"

x

"Wait a minute!" She needs this minute. Actually, she needs several hours to absorb this and knows she'll never get them. "Does McGee - does Tim know?"

He stares at her like she's lost her mind and she's ready to agree. "Are you _crazy_? Tell your Ex what we're doing?"

"Oh my God!" The full implications hit her and it's worse than McGee's slaps. "You mean Bizarro Abby has a _fuck buddy_ and it's YOU?"

He gets up, probably tired of craning his neck while laying on the floor. "Gail, what the hell are you talking about?"

x

She bites back a scream, has to chew it. "All right - listen - because I'm going to say this _once _so get it now or I'll kick your nuts into peanut butter. I'm _not_ Gail Sciuto, I'm _Abby _Sciuto, NCIS' Forensic Scientist in the real world and this is _my _lab. I got here by an accident I think has something to do with that storm last night - never mind 'what storm?' - there was a ginormous storm last night, deal with it.

"I got hit by lightning - and I came to you for help, _not _to get raped! I still think you can help me, but if you so much as touch me, so much as brush past me, I'll kick your balls into pancakes and not even Michelle will be able to help you!"

"Who?"

The word nearly derails her, she fights it off. "Never mind. Will you help or do I make sure you can never rape even a blow up doll?"

Looking quite stunned, Jimmy tries to catch up. Fortunately, caught up or not, he doesn't take too long to decide that "I'll... help you."

x

"_Good_." After so much time reacting to the maelstrom of insanity around her, it feels good to be able to take positive action, even if she has to cow a rapist - who if truth be told she has to grant is innocent, in a perverted, sicko sort of way - to do it.

He and Gail Sciuto have a strange relationship, but she decides it's none of her business. If he keeps his hands to himself he can go back to it - whatever it is - perhaps until the day her husband - ex-husband - finds out about them. They're playing a fatal game, trying to put one over on an Investigator, and she doesn't give a damn as long as he finds out _after _she gets out of this Bizzarro world.

x

Jimmy's quiet for a long moment, hands clasped and tips of forefingers to lips and she lets him be quiet. Jimmy, her Jimmy, would have said a great deal by this time, not all of it useful, but as everyone else is different here, so might he be too. Contemplative Jimmy is a stranger, but Rapist Jimmy had been a stranger too, and if his contemplation will lead to useful answers she'll let him contemplate.

After more than a minute of her holding her breath his eyes shift to her and he lowers his hands.

"Well, for starters, if you did get here through a bolt of lightning, getting back will electrocute you."

"No freaking kidding. Tell me something I don't know."

"All right. Getting across a cross-dimensional plane by using undirected electricity is impossible."

"Come on. I'm here."

"According to the Einstein-Rosen experiments, transduction of matter across a hyper-dimensional barrier is impossible using only natural forces. You cannot slide between Earths using a bolt of lightning."

"Maybe you're right, but I'm here. All but my tats."

"Your tats." This he evidently was not expecting.

"My tattoos. Somehow they didn't make the trip with me."

"Tattoos _plural_?"

"I have a lot of them, spider web here," she touches her neck, "big cross on my back, a load more that've vanished."

x

Jimmy is quiet again, this time for a longer moment and she waits, finding herself encouraged by his arguments rather than the reverse. Her Jimmy isn't stupid - far from it - but she's coming to understand what he'd be like if all that Medical knowledge were replaced with Theoretical and Applied Science.

His head is bent, he's silent, and she wonders if he's going to come up with an inspired solution and get her home. "I have an idea," he says, looking up to her.

"What?"

He straightens and removes his glasses, and for an instant she's reminded of that moment when Superman, in the first Chris Reeve movie, after his flight with Lois, is about to reveal his secret to her.

'Lois,' he'd said in his Superman voice, 'I'm really...'

Abby holds her breath. Is he going to pull a blue / red costume from a drawer and fly her home through an inter-dimensional rift?

"Open your blouse."

x

Furious, she strides forward. "I'm going to kick your–"

"You want my help, you'll open your blouse." Abby freezes, incredulous at this outrageous demand coming from the mouth of Jimmy Palmer. "Come on, it's not like I haven't seen them a thousand times."

Abby stares, dumbfounded, into the eyes of this anti-Jimmy and she feels more madness crash down upon her.

Slowly, unable to believe she's submitting and doing this thing, she raises her hands to her blouse, unclips the black tie from her neck and drops it so it hangs over the brass clip, manipulates the buttons, all the while denying she's doing it, denying she's feeling it.

x

There was a time in the privacy of her lab when, in her own mind, she'd pictured this moment with the thrill of hot lust. She'd thought how Jimmy, sweet loving Jimmy, would stand there dumbfounded and staring, unable to believe his good fortune. Now she's cold and tries to divorce herself, to deny she's doing this.

Not daring to think, she opens one button, then the next and the next. Her fingers work automatically rather than allow her to risk feeling, to risk thinking that she's opening her blouse to the man who'd just tried to rape her.

She spreads her shirt but can't do more. The demi-bra, half cups within which rest her breasts, is all that protects her and this only to just above her nipples. She flinches as he reaches out, impatient, and pulls down the right cup.

She's shaking, embarrassed, profoundly humiliated, face heating by the second and she doesn't dare move because if she moves this will be real and this can't be real.

"I don't know who you are inside your head this time," he tells her, "but you're Gail Sciuto, not this 'Abby Sciuto'. But it'd've been a hot fantasy if you hadn't gone all berserk on me."

"_What_? I–"

"The mark."

x

Incredulous, feeling the world tip out from under her, she looks down and sees a pink star tattooed on the upper side of her nipple.

She doesn't want to imagine how much _this_ one must have hurt going on. Tattooing hurts, but this must have been agony.

What is Jimmy to her that Gail would do this?

"I don't know what tattoos you were thinking of," he says as she covers herself again, buttons her shirt as quickly as she can, "but yours is still where it belongs."

"NO! I _AM_ ABBY!" She gets the tie clipped in place at her throat.

"Suit yourself. Abby, Gail, Abigail, different sides of the same hot bitch. I just wish you'd've let me in on the game earlier."

x

Unable to endure any more, she grabs him by the lapels of his lab coat, shoves and slams him backward over the table as he'd had her, his coat and shirt clutched in her fists. It's so gratifying to see sudden fear in his eyes.

"Now you listen to me and you listen good! The real Jimmy isn't such a bastard but it's only for _his_ sake that I'm not going to knock your head through a wall. I don't _care_ what you think, I don't _care_ about your ta–"

x

As quickly as the fury had flooded her, it washes out on a great tide and suddenly she can think clearly. She releases the frightened man and backs away.

"Of course! Of COURSE! It all makes _sense_ now! Transposing five feet ten, a hundred never mind pounds of pure sexiness through a singularity is _impossible_. It'd take more power than any lightning can carry to move more than an atom!"

She advances on him again so quickly he rolls off the table to its other side, backs away out of her reach. "_I_ didn't move, my _consciousness_ did! _This _is Gail Sciuto's _body_, brutalized liver and all, but _I'm stuck inside it_!"


	6. NASA Deadline

Chapter Six  
NASA Deadline

Abby no longer feels the mind ripping fear she's fought since waking up in the Bizzaro World to the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her 'ex-husband', itself a sense-blasting concept. Now all the fear is in Jimmy Palmer's eyes and she's glad to see it there.

"Wait," he implores, hands up in either surrender or appeal from the other side of the table and she actually sympathizes with him. She's felt the same way all day. "You're in Gail's _body_?"

"Don't sound so incredulous," she commands, overwhelming fear and frustration at being unable to escape coming out in anger, "you've been in it often enough."

"That's not fair - and doesn't help a thing."

"I guess it does explain now why I - why Gail's body - woke up on the floor. When you get evicted from your body by someone who just got blasted by the outer fringes of a humongous lightning bolt, you go down for the long count."

"I guess so," he agrees, sounding as though he's not sure what he's agreeing to.

"WAIT!" Her hands snap out to him and he freezes, and five seconds later probably wonders why he's frozen, but it takes her that long for the incipient thought to jell. "If I'm in Gail Sciuto's body, why aren't I blitzed?"

x

His expression proclaims that not only hasn't he kept up with her but he's steadily falling behind. "Blitzed?"

"It's an Earth-Prime word, never mind. I woke up this morning with three bottles laying on my coffee table - her coffee table; a Jack Daniels, a Johnny Walker and aaaaaa… Kentucky Bourbon. If I - I mean if she - if this body polished off three quarts why aren't I suffering the biggest hangover since Kirk scaled El Capitan?"

"Huh?"

"Never _mind_!"

"You don't drink."

"That's what I told Tim – I mean McGee, I can't call him Tim, he's not Tim, not my Tim."

"Wait, you were _drunk_?"

"No! That's it, I'm not. No hang over, no DTs, no morning after taste - and I wasn't even drinking Vodka. Why?"

"You don't drink. Gail, I mean, what, Abby? Gail doesn't drink; she's been clean and sober for months. You'll - she'll - be fired if she's not."

"Then what were those bottles doing on her table?"

"_I don't know_. I'm here in this lab."

"When you're not sexting her."

"Be fair, you love it and–."

"Okay, let's not bicker over that, we've got enough to bicker over."

x

"Okay, so 'clean and sober' Gail Sciuto hasn't touched a drink in months, good for her." Why she has those bottles, Abby doesn't care. "How do I get into my body?" His eyes on the junction of her pants give him away. "You _say_ it and I'll-"

"Would you please? I'm as anxious to get Gail back as you are."

"I'm not anxious to get her back, I'm anxious to-" To what? When she gets home the other Sciuto will - might - hopefully will.… "Okay, maybe I am. So how do we do it?"

He turns quickly, goes to and unlocks the door, leads her back into her - into his - lab office and sits down behind her - his - desk. He types at an impressive pace at the keyboard. She's a speed demon but what is he?

An Internet page appears on the screen. The central features are the NASA logo and an image of the sun. The text is too far for her to read and she restrains herself from pushing closer. He looks up at her.

"If your theory is right, and I'd love to punch a dozen holes in it if I could, we had better do whatever we have to do quickly."

"Why?" She can't take any more surprises or bad news, but the universe isn't going to be kind.

"Your sunspots, the prominences.… They're particularly intense, thousands of them oriented toward Earth, but they're decreasing. Over the past," he glances at his watch, "eleven hours there's been a marked but steady decline in intensity and frequency."

"How much time do I have?"

"I don't kno-" This time she does shove him aside, nearly knocks him out of the chair. By the time he's steadied himself she's opened another page.

"_FRACK_!"

"What?" He pushes her arm aside and looks at the graph displayed, checks his watch again. This chart is a projection of the sunspot activity based upon recent figures. It's impossible to predict the activity of sunspots, too little is known about them, but if the trend continues unchanged "Looks like you have about two hours."

"I can't get ready in two _hours_. I don't even know how to get ready."

Palmer's telephone rings.

x

"Yes. Yes. She's right here." A look up into her eyes and he decides to give her the receiver without saying 'it's for you'.

"Hello?"

/You're done there,/ Lieutenant Shepherd informs her. /The General wants to see you./

Abby considers the chances of her stalling this conference. Not very good. "Yes, ma'am."

The phone goes as dead as she feels and she reaches across Palmer to hang it up. "Your General wants to see me."

"Better go."

"I can't waste time with him. He wants to see Gail Sciuto, I can't even imagine why and I can't bluff my way through it. I have to work here."

"Look, I don't know about your world - I'm not even sure I believe in your world - but when the General sends for you, you go. I have no idea what kind of day you've had, but messing this up can make it a bad one."

She considers the logic of this. "If this has been a good day, I think I'd better meet your General." She turns away before she can change her mind.

"That's my girl."

x

She'd taken a step away, turns back on him but changes her mind about blasting him to a cinder. This world's Michelle might be able to, but he'd given no sign of knowing her.

But poorly hidden below the surface... "You really like her. Gail, I mean."

"Yes." He meets her eyes, and its with seriousness she rarely sees from the 'real' Jimmy Palmer. "And I want her back, even if she is you and you've just gone off some deep end. I'll help you, Gail."

She squeezes his arm. "Sorry. We're two different people."

This is clearly hard for him to hear. "Then get out of here and let me figure this out."

xxx

Abby has no doubt as to where the General's office is. In her ... in the real world ... it'd been Morrow's, then Shepherd's and even if it's Morrow's again she can deal with it.

What she can't deal with is opening the outer door to the Receptionist's office.

"_Gibbs_!"

She is so ecstatic to see him - finally! - that even if it weren't undignified and she doesn't care, she'd fall to her knees beside his desk and kiss his shoes! Everything's all right now! She can deal with a million more insanities now that she's found

"Major Gibbs," he corrects harshly, evidently not pleased to be so familiarly greeted by a "_Corporal_."

x

When Tim McGee had slapped her she'd felt the pain for so long and realizes her cheeks still hurt from the psychic blast of his assault. When Sammy had shown her the justification for her hate she'd felt the pain of the scalpel cut deep into her own breast. When Jimmy Palmer turned off the lights and started to rape her her terror nearly shattered her mind.

But Gibbs' unfeeling reprimand is a fist through the middle of her chest. It smashes through her sternum and explodes her heart, splashing it through her spine and flooding her lungs with blood enough to drown her.

She feels her knees give way and clutches the doorknob, locks her knees to keep erect, for if she falls to the thick carpet she'll start to cry and is sure she'll never stop. They'll strap a straight jacket about her long before she stops sobbing and she'll gladly surrender sanity and they can lock her away forever.

x

Her eyes lock on his uniform, the silver metal leaves on the white lapels flanking the black tie. Yes, okay, he's a Major. In real life he's the Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge. In any other city he'd be SAIC but he doesn't want to be behind a desk but he should be the General, she should be meeting with him in his private office where she can lay everything out to him.

Gibbs loves her; their Father/Daughter relationship is legendary. He'll help her. He'll

"Did you forget how to _salute?_" The sharp rebuke is another fist, and she can only stammer with a broken jaw.

"I - I'm, err, sorry, s- sir, Major, sir." She tries and hopes she gets it right. The only time she'd ever saluted Gibbs, left handed, she'd been playing and later that day he'd given her a kiss on her cheek. She'll get no kiss from this man. "Just... you... caught me by surprise."

"And how is that, Corporal?"

x

She can't stand it, the lack of recognition in his eyes. Oh, he knows who she is, a disgraced and demoted - and now probationary - junior officer, but the affection that shines in her Gibbs' eyes when he looks at her is dark in these.

She points vaguely to the far door, beyond which may be her doom. Maybe so, but if she doesn't get away from this man she is going to cry. "I guess I should, um, see the General now?"

"I guess you should."

He doesn't have to say 'instead of standing there like an idiot'. His silent disapproval yells it.

x

She crosses the outer room, scared of whom she'll find on the other side of that door. Probably Morrow.

Her hand is shaking as it closes about the knob, and she doesn't dare look back to Gibbs. If he's looking at her she's going to faint, overloaded by the madness.

If he's turned back from her, returned to his work, not giving her even a first thought, she's going to cry.

She forces herself to turn the knob. When she pushes open the inner door Bizzaro World drops out from under her.


	7. Desperate Times

Chapter Seven  
Desperate Times

"Come in and shut the door, Corporal," General Caitlin Todd, Commander of this world's NCIS, orders her.

Abby can't stop trembling as she manages to close the door. She wants to burst out in tears, just collapse right here and cry until the world goes back to normal. Shock after shock, madness after insanity, blast her mind. She crosses the room without falling, though she's shaking so hard she fears she's going to faint. Barely in time, she remembers that she had better salute.

It's bad enough Tim's her ex-husband and fed up with her; bad enough Jenny's her Supervisor; bad enough Sammy's her worst enemy - so far; bad enough Jimmy's her replacement and fuck buddy; _bad enough Gibbs_ _is a glorified Receptionist_ - okay, probably Aide - but now her dead friend is boss of NCIS and if she's reading her body language and expression right Kate - General Caitlin Todd - is not her friend here.

Does Gail Sciuto even _have_ a friend?

"Yes, ma'am," she says, stopping before the ghost's desk. The room is spinning around, the universe fragmenting and she wants to get _off_.

x

"Corporal Sciuto, explain this," General Todd, not Kate, commands. She touches a button on the laptop on her desk and the wall mounted plasma screen to Abby's right brightens.

The image is of the Evidence Vault downstairs, the stamp on the lower right says it's yesterday at 2136 and from the central cage she - no, Gail Sciuto - exits carrying three bottles in her arm.

Kate - General Todd- pushes a button and the image freezes at 2136:41. The image is too small and distant to read the labels on the distinctive bottles but she doesn't have to. There's a Jack Daniels, a Johnny Walker and a Kentucky Bourbon.

_"Well?"_

"Ma'am?"

"Have you gone deaf, Corporal? I ordered you to explain this."

"General, I don't understand."

It's obviously the wrong thing to say, for Todd had very evidently been holding on to very tenuous patience. "You are on film removing evidence from the vault without authorization. Why? And where is it?"

Things are bad enough, not for her but the woman whose body she inhabits. Nothing can be served by lying.

"They're in my apartment."

"Your apartment?" Todd asks, sounding faintly incredulous. "Why?"

She shakes her head. "I haven't a blessed idea." Now Todd is definitely incredulous. "I suppose she was conducting some kind of investigation."

"She?"

Abby wants to explain, but all she can think of is the ticking clock and the time it would take to explain - again. "Believe me, you wouldn't believe me."

x

It seems to Abby that she's rapidly exhausting her superior's patience. She wishes she could read General Todd as easily as she read Kate.

Kate would believe her.

"Corporal Sciuto, I doubt you appreciate how much trouble you're in."

"You have _no idea _of half of it."

Todd pushes a button on the corner of her desk, one Jenny doesn't have and Abby expects she's not going to be happy with what it does.

When the door opens behind her, she looks back and decides she's right.

x

Nikki Jardin stands at the closed portal, but she's not wearing the NCIS white and black. The shirt is blue, the badge is silver and the uniform is similar to Security in the real NCIS. The clothes, and her manner, scream Security anywhere in the multiverse.

She salutes her superior and Abby, thinking she is getting better at determining which of her friends like her and which do not, finds no bonhomme in this woman's eyes.

"Corporal, you will bring back those articles immediately, and then we shall determine your discipline."

Trapped, Abby can say no more than "Yes, Ma'am."

But she considers travel time to and from home and getting back to Jimmy against NASA's admittedly uncertain two hour estimate, which she has to believe as being all she has to go on. She can't help Gail Sciuto and save herself.

'Sorry, Gail, old buddy; whatever it is you've gotten yourself into, you're going to have to get yourself out of it.'

xxx

When they leave, Nikki walks a half pace behind her by the time they cross the MTAC bridge. 'At least this hasn't changed,' Abby thinks, though the woman's attitude definitely has. And Abby truly doubts that the 'real' Nikki's phobias are going to help in distracting this one. This Nikki Jardin doesn't seem like she has a problem touching anything, particularly the gun under her hand.

She's not walking with her or escorting her. Jardin behaves as though her charge is one step removed from being in handcuffs. Abby imagines that, on the return trip, she will be.

"If you don't mind," she tries, "I have to make a detour to the Forensics Lab."

"I do mind. You heard the General. You're to collect that evidence and come straight back."

x

They descend the steps and Jardin herds her to bypasses Operations, undoubtedly not going to allow Gail to collect any weapon from her station.

Abby doesn't look back as they head for the auxiliary elevator, not anxious to see any of her 'team', assuming they're even there or would step in to help her.

Jardin makes her board the elevator first, gets on herself but doesn't take her eyes off her prisoner as she presses the button for the garage.

At the instant the doors touch Abby rushes and body checks her, momentarily pinning the woman into the car wall.

Fists clenched but middle knuckles raised, she presses the joints hard into the carotid points at each side of the woman's neck.

Jardin can't push off from the wall before catastrophic loss of blood pressure makes her collapse, a dead weight, into Abby's arms.

xx

When the door opens to the garage, Abby drags her friend's doppelganger's body out and across the wide chamber. Jardin is stunned but her brain will recover in about three to four minutes.

She won't use the same technique on her friend a second time. Once can be dangerous enough.

Further, she's sure she'll never get the chance to do anything. Once Nikki recovers, if she's close enough to catch her, Nikki will beat the hell out of her.

There are two cars parked side by side and less than a yard apart and it's to these that Abby drags her friend/new enemy, laying her down between them. A quick search of the woman's pockets produces a set of handcuffs, a key and a handkerchief. She uses the cuffs to bind the woman's hands behind her back, then takes opposite corners of the handkerchief and fashions a gag.

It's an ineffective silencer, and the woman might either attract the attention of a passing agent or have a backup key and free herself, but Abby will not hurt her again.

She takes the Sig from Jardin's holster, not because she wants it but because she doesn't want Jardin to have it. Her own Sig is in 'her' desk drawer, and there's certainly no way she can go back for it.

Knowing she's certainly on a (hopefully unmonitored) security camera, she runs back to the elevator.

'Thank God this is Gail's body' she thinks as she uses the IRIS scanner to reopen the elevator.


	8. Desperate Measures

Chapter Eight  
Desperate Measures

Abby Sciuto knows the ground and lower levels of NCIS Headquarters even better than the upper floors, and prides herself upon being able to find her way blindfolded, depending solely upon ambient sounds and smells. She knows this because she's done it, frequently, late in the night, sometimes moving very fast from one point to another. The blindfolds were because, deprived of the sun, she might well have to escape in a blackout.

The running - okay, really double time walking - was because she might have to escape following explosions or fires.

To date, she hasn't had to use that particular skill, but she's particularly glad her familiarity extends to the locations of all the security cameras.

While there's no justification in believing that this will work in this bizarro world, she _has_ noticed that so far everything in the building is where it's supposed to be.

It's the people who are different.

x

While she knows it's impossible to avoid every camera, she does manage to confine her very hurried walk to the less frequently used, therefore less diligently monitored, corridors. At least that's what she knows of Earth-Prime.

Of course, once the alarm is sounded, every camera's record will be scanned until she's found. Nevertheless, she does manage to access the Fire stairs in the rear of Autopsy and come out beside the store room of her lab.

Jimmy is in her - his - office and looks up as she bursts in. "I'm about this–" she presses thumb and forefinger together "–close to being arrested! Probably worse. _Tell_ me you've got something."

"I've got something."

"Thank God!" She puts the Sig down on the table. She doesn't want it and is afraid that, if cornered, it may inspire one of her anti-friends to shoot her.

Jimmy's eyes lock on the weapon, then he forces himself to break that contact and look up at her. "You're not going to like it."

"I already don't like it. What is it?"

x

He rolls the chair back so she can get close and see the diagram on the left side of the screen and the rows of calculations on the right.

"This is your work?"

"Of _course_ it's my work. Who else's would it be?"

She doesn't want to get into anything with him. Instead she examines the diagram on the screen. She'd seen the real thing a few weeks ago. In the sub-basement of her NCIS - this obviously supports her theory about the buildings - 4 huge generators provide power for this building with much to spare. Their output is so high that even if two of them were destroyed NCIS could operate at full power consumption for several days.

Normally NCIS relies on city power but these four monsters are held in full readiness for any emergency. One, always active at minimum power, is programmed to trip over the instant city power is interrupted while the remaining three rev up to handle any conceivable load.

"You're right," she tells Palmer. "I hate this plan."

x

"What are those monsters rated at?"

"Together, 1.18 terawatts." He looks up into her scowl. "You didn't tell me how powerful that lightning bolt was."

"I had no idea. The window was closed and it was still enough to throw me halfway across my living room."

"How far away from you did it hit?"

"Well, I was leaning on the window sill and it hit the fire escape. Say 12 - 18 inches and– OH MY GOD!" She backs away from him. "OH MY GOD!"

"What?"

"OH MY GOD!"

"_WHAT_?"

"_Sammy_! She was leaning on the window sill too!"

"Who?"

"Sammy Sky!"

Much of the color drains from his face. "Did you see her since you're here?"

"Yes."

"Well, did she transfer with you?"

She flashes back to that encounter with this world's Samantha Sky, one she never wants to have again. "No."

"We didn't have a storm here, and since Samantha is as likely to be in your apartment as..." Comparisons fail him. "Then the only ones in your apartments were you... and you."

"But what happened to Sammy?" She can only wonder to herself, doesn't have any courage left with which to ask him. Unfortunately, he has an answer.

"A billion electron volts? She was probably electrocuted."

"Oh, God."

"Come to think of it, you were probably electrocuted too. Only your mind transferred, in which case..." He halts, totally motionless, and when he can act again only his lips can move. "In which case my Gail is gone."

x

"Hey, this is not over, and it's not going to be over until _I_ say it is. Now McGee's wife, _my_ McGee's wife, is a priest and she'd say God doesn't permit things to go so badly wrong they can't be fixed with His help. Now I firmly believe that and you'd better believe it too, mister, because we're going to do this thing. I'm going home and she's coming here-" she slaps her chest "-because that woman's got a mountain of trouble for her to ask for God's help to fix. Now gather what gear you need and let's get to the Batcave."

She'd expected him to jump on her McGee being married to a priest; most Roman Catholics do, but he doesn't even jump at the 'batcave'. Instead, she thinks he's probably thinking of two bodies sharing a lightning bolt versus a terawatt for her alone. He certainly looks no happier than she feels.

"I hope 1.18T will be enough," he muses.

"Any more and my bones will be the only thing you bury."

She wants a contradiction to her hyperbole. It doesn't make her feel better that he nods, grim faced, before turning back to the screen.

x

He rolls the chair forward and she must pull back to make room.

"_Fortunately_ I have access. Some of the experiments I have to run require a lot of power." He looks back and up. "That's where the code words were inspired, the ones I use with you... With Gail."

"What?" She smiles. "Is she into electroplay?"

He stares at the screen, and when he answers his tone is dead. "No."

She wants to reach out to him. He sounds so lost. "I'm sorry."

"It's really starting to hit me that I'm about to shock you with a billion volts during an unpredictable solar storm and there's only a trillion to one shot that this'll work."

"Then we've got to _make_ this work. Come on."

xx

They leave by the Emergency door and staircase, descend past the Autopsy level, the garage level and come out in the sub-basement. Down here there are fewer cameras and Security may or may not be attentive to activity deep in the bowels of the building, but Abby's too aware that upstairs Nikki Jardin is certainly conscious by now. Has she been heard? Found? Is the APB or BOLO or whatever Bizzaro World uses already out for the fugitive agent - and her accomplice?

The only thing that might help them evade the coming hunt is that they may think she'd try to escape, not dig deeper into the bowels of the building.

A long run down a cement block lined corridor, through a red painted steel door and Abby halts. She feels this would be like coming face front to the Starship Enterprise.

The four monstrosities extend from floor to ceiling, four identical generators. Granted she saw her own building's power source a few weeks ago, but these are nothing like them.

"This is more than NCIS needs."

"NCIS? In an emergency these can supply power to this quarter of the Yard and still have juice to spare for my experiments." He pulls a device that resembles a compact Geiger counter from the pocket of his white lab coat.

"Where did you get that?" Her equipment includes a Geiger counter, but this isn't one. It's way too small.

"I told you, my hobby. It measures solar radiation. I use it to help me with Radio Telescopy."

"Wait a minute! This place has a Radio Telescope?" She'd seen no such installation on her way in and can barely imagine why the Navy Yard would have one.

"You kidding? We're lucky this place has reliably working bathrooms. And this thing is little more than a toy - until now." He presses a button and the unit instantly bursts out in static. "Hear that? It's only because space is so flooded with dynamic energy from the sunspots that there's no use in trying to tune it in to anything. Normally I use this to supplement readings for my own use when I tie in with NASA's systems on a secure channel."

"Boy, I have got to get to know my Jimmy better."

"Perhaps so.

x

Jimmy sets the loudly crackling counter beside the computer and goes to a storage cabinet on the left, yanks out some long thick cables. "I'll need help with these, they're heavy."

She bends to grab two of the long cables. On each end is a rounded unit similar to a long plug.

"They go into those slots in the front right of each generator."

Hefting them, Abby is struck with the reality, or audacity, of this plan. "Oh, I'd kill for a 'Caf'Pow!'" He turns to her. "Never mind."

"While you insert these," he says, dropping his two cables before the third and heading back to the second generator, "I'll slave these four into one so that from here I can cause a simultaneous burst from all four units."

Plugging the ends in takes only a few seconds, allowing her to join Jimmy at a somewhat more sophisticated computer panel than she'd expected. "I see why you like to use these."

"They have advantages over the old ones. Okay," he presses a final few buttons. "They're ready. Throw this switch and–" He can't finish. The reality of this situation is too plain.

"Either the current sends me home or burns the flesh off my bones before I realize it's happened."

"Sure I can't-?"

"Don't think it. I'm going home. And you want Gail back."

"Just that if you don't do this, you don't die."

"I don't turn into Gail either."

"Good point."

x

He leads her to the middle of the room, lays down one cable and works to remove the plug, exposing the bare metal. She scoops up the other while he goes to retrieve the other cables.

"This system lets the generators share power so the output remains steady over many hours. But I'm not going to feed one to another; you're getting the output of all four."

Kneeling before her with two of the thick cables in his hands, he positions them before her feet. The noise of the counter continues undiminished.

"Electricity through a wire travels at the speed of light."

"Tell me something I don't know," she says, tension bringing out her testy side.

"Okay. I'm setting these twelve inches from your feet but six inches apart." He arrays the four in a close arc before her. "Just like the lightning didn't touch you, the current from these mustn't either. What we need to do is create a burst near enough to you to interact with the intense gamma radiation and other energies presently bombarding the Earth to create a field that will transpose you back to your own world - mentally - without frying you to a cinder.

"The burst will be one half of a second long. When I throw the switch the currents _should_ arc between the ends of the cables and the charge, together with the radiation, should reverse the accident that sent you here. _However_, if the charge arcs to you instead of to the other ends," he looks up, meets her eyes, "you'll be dead before you hit the floor."

"Nice."

He looks up from measuring off the last two cables, then glances to the still crackling counter. Is the noise still as intense as it was a minute ago? "Remember, at best there's only a one in a trillion chance that this'll work. If you want to change your mind, it has to be now."

"I told Gibbs once that when I go, I want it to be spectacular. What better way than riding my personal lightning bolt?" He doesn't look any more confident. "Let's do this."

x

He gets to his feet. "Remember, you do not _move_ from this spot."

"Aye, aye, Admiral."

He looks momentarily bewildered, but then steps over to the control. There's no doubt in her mind now, the sound of the radiation meter is definitely not as intense as it was a moment ago.

"Damn, solar activity is still slowing down."

There's no way to predict what will happen. The radiation might rise in the next two seconds or die completely before he reaches the control.

She looks at the four metal ends arrayed one foot from her toes. "No long goodbyes, Jimmy. Do it now."

He reaches for the control

"_Get away from that switch_!"

x

The scientists look toward the door and Abby feels her eyes bulge. "_McGee_!"

Sergeant Timothy McGee stands within the doorway, his Sig trained in a two handed grip on Palmer.

She realizes too late that he'd naturally be the one to find them. When the alarm was raised he'd check Security films and trace her step by step.

"McGee, wait! You don't know what you're doing."

"Stopping him from killing my wife!" He glances at the black cables snaking across the floor to her feet. "You think I don't know what you think you're doing?"

"This is the only way!"

"The only way for what?"

"I _explained_ the Brane Theory."

"Knock off that damned nonsense! Get away from those things."

"I can't."

"Sergeant McGee–"

"You shut up! You, _get away_ from those!"

The staccato noise is gradually fading.

"Tim, there's no TIME!"

"Are you crazy? I'm not going to let this happen!"

"Tim, I have to get _home_!"

"Enough of this fantasy. I love you and I'm not going to let you hurt yourself!"

"You still love me?" His stunning words almost make her forget who they all are, but she remembers he doesn't love her, not after- "After hurting me–?"

"It's _because_ I love you that you drive me crazy. You _frustrate_ me so much." Jimmy inches closer to the controls. "Stay away from those!"

The sound continues to diminish.

"Sergeant, we're running out of time."

"McGee–!"

x

Tim's eyes flicker to her and Jimmy turns, reaches for the switch. The gunshot reverberates in the chamber as Jimmy's knocked forward, a burst of blood high and spreading over the back of his white lab coat.

"JIMMY!" Abby screams.

Palmer pushes himself up off the panel and turns, falls back against it, disbelief chiseled on his face.

"McGEE, STOP IT!"

Jimmy reaches for the switch beside him and another blast fills the chamber. Blood explodes from his chest, the red stain spreads quickly over his white shirt.

"NOOOO! GOD, STOP IIIIIT!"

Jimmy's knees buckle and his hand holds the switch as he slides down, Abby's shriek filling the room.

_**SZR-AAKKT**_


	9. Epilogue

Chapter Nine  
Epilogue

Abby's screams startle Gibbs, DiNozzo and Sammy Sky as she bursts up from the bed. The insensate shrieks gradually reduce to words no less wild.

"JIMMY! OH GOD _JIMMY_! HE SHOT HIM!"

Gibbs, closest to her, grabs her shoulders to restrain her onto the bed as she keeps screaming. The door to his left flies open and two white uniformed women rush in.

Abby looks past Gibbs's arm, finally feels him holding her, her startled and distressed friend in the way of two nurses and

x

"He shot him, Gibbs! He _shot_ him."

He holds her down, the wild distress in her eyes frightens him. "Abby, who shot who?"

"McGee! McGee shot _Jimmy_! He thought he was trying to save me but–"

She looks around, taking in the white room, the hospital bed next to hers and Gibbs presses the realization.

"Abby, McGee didn't shoot anyone. He's at NCIS, Jimmy and Michelle Palmer are at home and you've been here in Bethesda since last night. You and Sky were hurt during the storm. She recovered first–"

"I'm smaller," the blonde woman quips from the foot of the hospital bed.

"She called 911 and you were brought here.

x

She looks around again, at the room, at Gibbs, at Tony, at Sammy, at the nurses, and can't deny what he says.

"It was horrible, Gibbs," Abby says. "It was some weird Bizzaro-Earth nightmare I just couldn't wake up from."

"Well, you were awake until you just conked out on the bed and woke up two seconds later screaming," Tony tells her, index fingers stuck in, working to clear his ears. "Lord, you could give lessons to Scream Queens."

"Gibbs - what happened? It was all so _real_."

"From the minute you woke up you were hallucinating. You kept insisting your name was Gail, you called me 'Major' and said you were trying to..." He stops at the mounting horror on her face. "Abs?

Her eyes are painfully wide. "I was trying to what?" It _wasn't_ a dream?

It wasn't a dream!

"You kept saying you could prove Drake was innocent. That the webbing prints we need to lift from around the necks is more important than the fingerprints on the sides of the bottles."

"Of course!" For a moment she tries to put aside the madness - it couldn't have been real, could it? For a moment she puts aside the madness in favor of simple Forensic Science. "I get it now. I know what she was trying to do."

"Abby?" Sammy sounds really scared.

"The webbing between the thumb and forefinger, where someone would hold a bottle when drinking! Anyone can handle a bottle, but not many will wrap their–"

"Except we're not investigating anyone named Drake," Tony tells her.

x

His words almost silence her, but now that she knows she's right - how can it be real? - she knows he's wrong. "Yes, you are. You just don't know it because it's not on this Earth."

"Abby," Gibbs tries to interject reality into this too-long-running delusion, "you've been here since last night."

"That too. But trust me, Gibbs, I wasn't." She reaches out to Sammy, who comes up on the other side of the bed to hug her. "At least _you_ don't hate me anymore."

Sammy pulls back. "I've never hated you."

"You did when I cut your breast in half."

Sammy exchanges bewildered looks with the men, not just a little mingled with fear.

"I can't believe this was all real. But I think Jimmy - if Gail can save him, her ex-husband McGee is toast, even if her career is shot."

Sammy pulls back, the fear in her pale blue eyes vying with terror. "Abby, are you still hallucinating?"

"Never did, hon." She looks past Sammy's shoulder to take in her equally worried friends. "I'll tell you all about it but believe me, Major," she looks to Tony, "Sergeant," to Sammy, "Doctor, you are _not_ ready for Bizarro-Earth."

Fin... or is it?


End file.
